Authors: Melanie Tomlin
“And you,” he replied. “I don’t think they can find you here, but wear the blade anyway. If you need to run, do so. You can always call out to me later and I’ll find you, even if it means travelling to the depths of hell.”
I laughed. I could imagine Danny fighting his way through a hoard of angry demons, like a medieval knight, to rescue me.
“What’s funny?” he asked.
“I was thinking of the similarities between you and a knight in shining armour,” I replied.
“I have been that,” he said, “during the crusades.”
I poked his arm, trying to lighten the mood. “One day,
Danny Malakh,
you’re going to tell me all about yourself and what you’ve seen. You know more about me than I know about you!”
“It will take more than a day,” Danny laughed. “
God
willing I’ll tell you the entire history of
all
the angels. Let’s just get past this one hurdle first.”
“I don’t care about the other angels,” I said.” I only want to know about you.”
“As an angel you’ll need to learn the basics of angelic history.”
“Fine, fine,” I replied in defeat. “Go now. The sooner you go, the sooner you can return.”
Danny kissed my cheek once more and walked away from me. I turned away from him. I couldn’t watch him leave.
“Alone again,” I sighed. “What the
hell
am I going to do this time to stop from going crazy?”
I looked at the perfectly formed hole that had been carved in the wall of the cottage with Danny’s angel fire, before he’d put out the flame. It was like a port hole in a ship, about chest height, and the breeze it let in was refreshing. The fragrance of the flowers from the garden filled the room.
I spied my sparring partners standing — unblinking and not breathing — in the corner, to the right of the port hole.
“Hey, you with the bad skin, come here!”
Funnily enough they all walked towards me.
Oh well,
I thought,
it’s probably time I stretched myself — four against one.
I gestured with my hand for them to bring it on and unsheathed the knife. It would be interesting to see if they would work as one unit or as individuals. Could the monsters work together? The balance of power might easily change if they could set aside their differences and animosities to fight for a common cause — the destruction of the angels.
As they charged I bent my knees and performed a backwards somersault, landing behind the zombie. I quickly dispatched him and lunged to the left, stabbing into the back of the varakiana. I drove the blade in as hard as I could, to penetrate its armour-plated skin. Once in, I applied a tremendous amount of pressure to push the blade downward towards its tail. It was good to know my knife worked where other blades would not.
The vampire was smart enough to approach me from the side that was busy with the knife, and I turned the varakiana and myself around so I could grab the vamp by the throat. My hand instinctively squeezed and began to drain it. It was empty blood to me, hollow. These creatures were not real and their blood would not satisfy any hunger I had. Like a placebo, it would do nothing except trick my mind into thinking it had been given what it needed.
I wrenched the knife out of the varakiana’s body just as the werewolf pounced. I used the vamp as a shield and the wolf savaged it wildly, its claws raking my arm.
“That bloody well hurts!” I yelled out. I wasn’t aware there was going to be any real pain in these training exercises.
The wolf tore the vamp in half and lunged for my throat. I stabbed it in the neck, below the jaw, and hammered the blade upwards into its brain. Its body went limp and I heaved it off me.
All of the bodies repaired themselves and they stood once again in the corner, awaiting my command. I inspected my arm, but there was no evidence of any injury. Only my shredded sleeve told the truth about what had happened to my arm.
“Cool,” I said out loud, then muttered. “Thanks,
Danny
. It would have been nice to have a bit of warning that this,” I looked at my now healed arm, “is what can happen if I give them a bit of free rein.”
I called them back over. I needed to practice tackling all four of them without the use of the knife. What if I dropped it or it was wrestled out of my hand, or worse still, lost? I needed to make sure I could handle myself in
any
situation. Okay, so my fall-back position was to get out of there, and get out quickly. However, the more I practiced fighting — offence
and
defence — the better I’d get. I mean, wasn’t that the point of armed forces training exercises?
I incorporated more gymnastic moves into my routine — flips and twists. At one point, when I was clutching the throats of two of my opponents, I danced them around the floor as a shield. Then I used them to support my weight as I performed some high kicks, front and back, to keep the other two away, until they dropped — all their blood drained.
Two out of three times I succeeded in defeating all four of them. The one time I lost wasn’t pleasant and involved a lot of pain. Once it was over my body was whole again. Only my tattered clothes and the fresh memories of pain served as a reminder. I knew I had to learn from the experience. I recalled the details over and over again in my mind. They
could
work as a team! They were
not
the dumb sparring partners I thought them to be. It seemed that they could adapt to my fighting technique. The more we fought, the harder it became for me. If this was in fact what was happening, eventually they would win two out of three matches, then all of them. I had to come up with new and interesting ways to keep them off guard.
The wolf had an advantage two of the others didn’t — his rock-hard rib cage. I wanted to know if I could crack it, or better still break through it. The wolf stood in the centre of the room, alone, waiting for me to strike. He had been commanded to keep still, so I had nothing to fear. He wouldn’t attempt to defend himself.
I parted the fur around his rib cage and tapped on the skin. It didn’t feel rock-hard, or was it only that now I was stronger it felt softer? I punched at it a few times with my closed fist — short sharp jabs — and nothing happened. The ribs didn’t flex or give and my knuckles felt like they
were
connecting with something hard.
“Gees, I wish I could give you a shave to get a better idea of what I’m dealing with!” I mumbled.
Wait,
I thought.
I have a knife, why not use it to give Fido a haircut?
“Raise your arms and stand still,” I commanded. “This won’t hurt a bit.”
I smiled as I cut handfuls of fur from his torso, and carefully scraped the remaining stubble from his skin. I stood back to survey my handiwork. Not bad at all. I sheathed the knife and ran my hands along his chest and back. It was a close shave indeed. The outline of the rib cage was much clearer now, the fused bones easier to see.
I tried a couple more jabs, this time using both hands —
left, right, left, right
— to get a better look at what happened to his chest when I punched it. My initial assessment that it didn’t flex or give was correct.
I unsheathed the knife again and stabbed at intervals of about two centimetres, trying to find a weakness, particularly where the bone was fused. I could pierce the skin, no problem there, but couldn’t penetrate the bone. In a desperate attempt to get through, I backed up to the bedroom door then ran, full pelt. Before I reached its side I swung the knife in a wide horizontal arc. As I came level with the wolf the knife hit him in the chest with a tremendous amount of force. The knife made it through all right, straight into the heart, but it jarred my arm so badly I dislocated my shoulder. At least I’d proved to myself that it was possible, though a lesser blade could not have done the job.
I rolled my arm and shoulder in large circles to speed up the process of popping my shoulder back in place. The wolf had not healed and returned to its position in the corner — the knife was preventing him from doing so. I had to stand on the wolf’s chest and pull on the haft with as much strength as I could muster to remove the blade. I tumbled backwards onto the floor and the wolf quickly healed and returned to his place with the others.
“I think I’ll stick to their soft spot,” I muttered.
I practiced throwing the knife from a distance, to see how deep into the flesh of each monster it would penetrate, and with what accuracy I could throw. After twenty-three attempts I was able to hit the zombie dead centre in its heart, which was a much smaller target than its head. The wolf once again proved more of a challenge. Finding that small spot near the base of the neck was really hard, especially with all that fur! It wasn’t like I was going to be able to ask them to shave before going out on a hunt.
There was no way I was going to be able to decapitate the vamp by throwing the blade. It just wasn’t designed to do that, yet I still had a lot of fun poking it full of holes. I had to laugh when, aiming for its forehead, the blade ended up through its eye socket. The haft of a blade sticking out of the place where an eye should have been was a funny look.
Having too much time on your hands and nothing to do but fight can be a bad thing. I’d already hurt myself a few times with the wolf. As I thought about the pain it occurred to me that my ability to cope with, and manage the pain, might make the difference between winning and losing, living and dying.
So, what does a girl who used to get beaten up by men for their own sick pleasure do? She embraces the pain — the one thing she can always rely on. One by one I allowed my pet monsters to bite, claw and break, until I could take no more and ordered them to stop. When my body healed and the pain subsided, I started again. Each time I lasted a little longer. Each time I lost a little more of myself to the madness of the pain. Finally I snapped and screamed in rage, retaliating by ripping out the heart of the vamp that was attacking me with one hand, and tearing out its throat with the other.
When night fell, some hours later, and Danny still hadn’t returned, I felt numb to the core of my very being. I needed to
feel
something, anything. So I sought the thing I had lived with for so long that it was like second nature to me — pain. In a sick and twisted masochistic state — I couldn’t see it at the time — I summoned all of my pet monsters to attack me, surrendering myself to the pain they inflicted.
Danny returned as I lay bleeding and bloodied on the floor. I felt ashamed to have him find me like that, abandoned on a path that some would associate with a death wish.
“Stop!” he commanded and the monsters disappeared. “
What are you doing?
”
Danny’s face looked troubled.
Is it because of the way he found me, or does he have bad news?
I lay on the floor staring at nothing in particular, waiting to heal. He knelt down beside me and gripped my arms. Through his fingers a river of blood flowed and I realised it was taking longer to heal because he’d dismissed the monsters, permanently.
“Bring them back,” I whispered. “I heal quicker when they’re here.”
“
I will not bring them back so you can allow them to tear you to shreds again,
” Danny replied angrily.
“I only did it to improve my tolerance for pain. When I discovered what ability you’d gifted them with, I knew each time it was over I’d be all right.”
“What are you talking about?” he said.
“The healing. If they hurt me, once it’s over I heal. You should have told me that’s what happens.”
“You’re delirious. I can’t make you heal that way.”
The bleeding was slowing and the wounds began to close. Danny let go of my arms and rolled up the sleeves of my jumper, which was soaked through with blood. He rubbed my arms, seeking the wounds and found none. He looked at me, astonished.
“Helena … you can heal open wounds yourself now. You no longer need my blood.”
He helped me into a sitting position.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood though. You’ll probably feel weak for a time. You’ll definitely need to feed soon. Go and have a bath. Clean yourself up.”
I leaned on Danny as we headed to the bathroom and held onto his arm for support as I climbed into the bath. I lay there, too weak to do anything. He gently soaped my body and washed the drying blood away.
“I don’t think you need to practice anymore,” he said soothingly. “There’s nothing more for you to learn.”
I didn’t argue. I felt drained — mind, body and soul. I’d pushed myself to my limits and exceeded them, with dire consequences.
When my body was clean Danny helped me out of the bath. He dried me and wrapped me in a thick robe before carrying me back to the couch. He sat next to me and hugged me to him, kissing the top of my head.
“What happened?” I asked.
He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. I knew then that he was troubled. I’d noticed that he always went through those exact same motions when he was troubled.
“My superior says he can do nothing for us.”
I caressed his cheek with my hand and said, “Show me.”